I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a “circle of life” like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me.

The purpose of the claim, as I can tell, is to relieve any anxiety the reader may have felt about the government’s helping itself to people’s property:

That’s why our current policies are so upside down. When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.

So, help yourselves, Washingtion! Help yourselves, America! Don’t worry. You won’t kill any jobs! ….Well, okay. Not so fast. Read the rest of this entry »

I first caught this article re-posted at Phawker.com under the title, How Steve Jobs F*cked Over The American Worker. Steve Jobs could have sat at home and played his Atari all day. He chose instead to revolutionize the way we communicate. This is the thanks he gets.

But in 1996, the moneymen on Wall Street decided Apple was not living up to their expectations. Earnings had sagged. To raise cash and bolster the bottom line, the company was forced to unload assets. The Fountain plant was sold, just four years after it had opened. The plant was profitable and well-run, but Wall Street’s relentless focus on short-term earnings demanded results.

The officers were mistaken in believing Mr. Guerena fired at them. However, when Mr. Guerena raised the AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle in their direction, they needed to take immediate action to stop the deadly threat against them.

Police need to try to understand: when a team of them kick down someone’s door for no good reason and infiltrate with guns drawn, they are guests in the other people’s homes.

I’m not necessarily agreeing that cutting government and regulations is a “race to the bottom”, but they are asking the right questions about government claims of job creation. Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Viets, Tebeau’s attorney, says the November 1 raid on Camp Zoe involved about 80 federal agents and they “didn’t find so much as a roach” on the property.”There were several dozen federal agents from all the alphabet soups — IRS, DEA, ATF — backed up by local cops who came onto the property with federal subpoenas,” Viets says. “They basically asked for business records, which they got.”

The DEA and U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the specifics of the ongoing investigation.

An official statement published on the Camp Zoe website says “one patron was arrested for previous warrants unrelated to Camp Zoe.” The message also says, “the same day the DEA seized all the money in the Camp Zoe bank account — which included most of the gate receipts for the Spookstock 9 weekend. This money was to be used to pay staff, artists, security, production (lights & sound), trash pickup, etc. for the festival weekend. It was also to be used for the basic bills for Camp Zoe to get the business through the winter.”

Grand theft campground. Absolutely abominable. Those who do not speak out against the War on Drugs tacitly support this. On a lighter note, I used to listen to a podcasted radio program hosted by Dan Viets out of KOPN Columbia, Missourim, called Sex, Drugs, and Civil Liberties. It does not seem to have podcasted since last July, but man it was great. Dan, you are an inspiration.

An absolutely chilling story of police corruption in New York City. Officers are pressured to reach arrest quotas by making illegal arrests while underreporting major crimes to make themselves look successful. They then go to disturbing lengths to intimidate an officer who does not perform. But first: what could happen to you if you make terroristic threats on facebook.

You’ll hear proponents of government stimulus often say that the private sector is not creating jobs fast enough. Have any of them ever thought to ask why not? As it turns out, they’re afraid of something: the uncertain regulatory environment, of course. Read the rest of this entry »

The Government Accountability Office tested the government’s Energy Star program with phony products and found it essentially to be a rubber stamp–except that only 15 of 20 products were accepted and two were rejected. I wish they’d explained the rejections in a little more detail.

Every time a libertarian stays in the closet, an angel gets its wings ripped off.

The Cato Institute posts this excellent intro to Libertarianism to share with your interested friends and family. At the end, Stossel asks for alternatives to the term “Libertarian”. I liked the term a lot until I learned that it used to be the term for “leftist anarchism”. I’d like to come up with another term to avoid the confusion.